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All Rise...

The Charge

"If you lusted after me so, why weren't you also in love with me? Can
the two feelings really be separate?"—Ariel (Mia Farrow)

Opening Statement

Written at the same time as the ambitious and complex Zelig, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is
the flip side of everything Woody Allen: pastoral instead of urbane, hasty
instead of meticulous, classical instead of jazz.

Facts of the Case

Are we in store for a wedding? We begin with Mendelssohn's wedding
processional. Ah, desire. If A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy can be
spotted at all as a Woody Allen film, it is in the obsession with…well,
obsession. But Dr. Leopold (Jose Ferrer) does not believe in such silliness: he
is a pure empiricist, preferring "fixed substances" to metaphysics and
superstition. A pompous pedant right out of a Molière play, Leopold is ripe
for a lesson.

And so we gather the players together: Andrew (Woody Allen) is the wacky
inventor who jettisoned Wall Street by pitching himself headlong into
metaphysical gadgetry, Maxwell (Tony Roberts) is a doctor who regularly sleeps
with his patients. But when all these silly men meet in Andrew's home by the
river, with their respective women (Mia Farrow as Leopold's fiancé Ariel,
Julie Hagerty as Maxwell's assistant Dulcy, and Mary Steenburgen as Andrew's
wife Adrian), desire turns out to be the most magical elixir of all.

The Evidence

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy can only be taken as farce. Woody
borrows from Shakespearean comedy (less the obvious Midsummer Night's
Dream than Much Ado About Nothing)
and Molière, or even Oscar Wilde. This is deliberate caricature, played
over the top by the entire cast—except Mary Steenburgen, who seems a bit
too relaxed compared to the fever pitch of the others. Perhaps the signs that
this movie is some sort of dream are altogether too conspicuous: all three women
look like willowy sisters, with their thin faces and reedy voices. Variations on
a theme. Dulcy is raw sexuality; Adrian naïve and nervous; Ariel
independent. Once, long ago, Ariel and Adrian had an affair in which she slept
with everybody but him, and now she is planning to marry Leopold out of
desperation over her age. The line between love and lust, the boundary of
desire, blurs.

And the men? Each is part of a whole. Leopold is the superego, controlling
and repressed, the side of Woody that favors existentialism over spirituality (a
theme more conspicuously explored in his brilliant Crimes And Misdemeanors):
ultimately he will be paired with Dulcy, whose "raw energy" balances
him—then he will die and become pure spirit, finding his passionate side
in the magical forest. After all, this must have a happy ending in which love
triumphs, right?

Maxwell is the id, desire without limits, paired up ultimately with Ariel as
she releases the desire that she could not feel with Andrew. And
Andrew—Woody himself—is the ego, caught between rationality and
lust, tempted and tormented, but in the end, left pretty much back where he
started, only with his relationship to Adrian strengthened and made more
passionate.

All of this is playful and hurried, jumping from one wacky misunderstanding
to the next, as is characteristic of farce, even down to the awkward closure
that renders everyone happy and fulfilled. But even if the photography (by the
legendary Gordon Willis, using his trademark shadowing effects) has a soft and
comfortable quality to it, punctuated by warm glows, the timing of everything
seems a little bit off. This terrain does not seem particularly conducive to
Woody's usual obsessions. Turn of the century Americana, the pastoral
environment: the cast feels out of place here. The jokes are stilted, as if we
are watching a dress rehearsal while everyone gets a better handle on their
characters. Even the mannered prettiness of Mendelssohn seems to suggest a more
garden-party variety of love, rather than the edge of lust that the film needs
to carry across its point about desire's masterful hold over the soul.

Do I even have to mention that MGM includes no other extras apart from some
notes on the insert and a theatrical trailer? Oh well, at least there are
English subtitles this time. We're making progress. Maybe next release, we'll
get color bars.

Closing Statement

So what went wrong with A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy? Perhaps the
entire project was merely Woody's way of biding time while his attention was
focused on Zelig. If so, then this film is
really the equivalent of doodling in the margins while gathering your thoughts
to write something of substance (or more apt for Woody, tooting out a ditty on
your clarinet while gathering your wits to play a jazz number). One of Woody
Allen's weakest efforts, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is probably worth
a look for Woody completists, if only to compare the sort of films he is good at
to one where he is working far outside his strengths.

The Verdict

The court orders Mr. Allen to stay safely in the city, where his brands of
wry humor and existential despair are more appropriate. And MGM's recidivism has
become tiresome: the studio is once again fined for its lack of supplemental
materials.